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Thursday, April 3, 2014

Deadlines

“But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep
And miles to go before I
sleep.”—Robert Frost.

It doesn't have to be
November for you to set concrete goals for your writing.
NaNoWriMo is great and all, but if you only put pressure on yourself
one month out of the year to get things done, you're missing out.
Writing is hard work—learning to write is even harder—and it's
always easier not to write instead, to put it off, to day dream about
your characters a little more, to just watch something on the
Internet. Even when you are working regularly, after struggling to
get down 300 words in an hour or two, its always easier to wipe your
brow and say, “enough for today,” than to keep going.

Is it enough? Or are you dragging your
feet?

Try this: set
a deadline for your project, and stick to it.

Get
rid of the guess work and the excuses, hold your feet to the fire,
and write. Don't set some psychotic deadline like writing a novel in
a week. You'll kill yourself trying to reach it, you won't make it
by half, and then you'll feel terrible. Plan an obtainable goal, and
then strive for it. You'll write more
than usual and you're writing will be better,
because you'll have to cut down on distractions and focus when you're
working or else you won't reach your deadline. You'll also
feel better about the whole
process when you do reach that deadline, because not only will you
have a finished draft, but you'll have kept your promise to yourself.
Even if you do go into overtime, if you've planned appropriately, it
shouldn't be by much. Anyway, life happens. If you've been working
hard to reach your goal, you'll know it, and it won't bother you.

But
maybe you think that kind of pressure would stifle you. Deadline?
The very word sounds like it kills creativity.
No, not for you, you're an artist, a flower blooming in the
moonlight, you need time to be inspired. Okay. Keep doing what
you're doing if it's working for you. Is it working for you?

Set
goals big and small. Make a deadline to write a poem by midnight
every day this weekend, or a short story by Monday. If you have no
idea how long it would take you to write a novel, or if you even
could do such a thing, set a deadline for 50 pages. If you estimate
you can write two pages a day, roughly 500 words double spaced,
that's about a month of work to reach your goal. Keep track of your
progress, and if in a month you find yourself woefully behind
schedule, reassess. Have you worked earnestly enough? Have you
gotten too bogged down in minute details? Maybe you should start
with a smaller project. Or maybe a month is simply too little time
right now.

Calibrate
a new deadline and nail it to the wall over your desk. Be sure its a
nail, though, that
way the you who sits down to write later will get the point. I don't
recommend escalating to writing the date in blood. Blood draws
flies, and you'll have to paint over it each time. I recommend even
less writing it in your own blood. Stick to the more working class
intimidations of . . . you know what, never mind. I may be a little
punch drunk since I recently met my own deadline of April 1st
to finish rewriting a novel. Just Try it.